The present invention relates to an exhaust volume of the type comprising a muffler having a casing provided with an inlet and an outlet for passing gases and adapted to enable the muffler to be mounted in an exhaust system.
The invention also relates to an exhaust system including such an exhaust volume. Finally, the invention relates to a motor vehicle including such an exhaust system.
On mass-produced vehicles, the exhaust volumes for damping sound waves are made by rolling up a sheet of metal and by crimping it together. End walls are then added to the ends of the resulting cylinder. Such exhaust volumes are said to be rolled and crimped.
The cost of manufacturing such exhaust volumes is moderate. Nevertheless, they are unsuitable for making optimum use of the empty space available beneath the body of a vehicle.
Thus, for high-power vehicles that require exhaust volumes of maximum capacity, such exhaust volumes are made by assembling together two stamped half-shells. Stamping half-shells makes it possible to give the shells a shape that is complementary to the bottom surface of the vehicle body. This optimizes use of the space available for the exhaust volume.
Nevertheless, stamped exhaust volumes are relatively expensive to manufacture since they require two half-shells to be shaped and then to be assembled together around their periphery. In addition, a special stamping tool must be manufactured for each type of exhaust volume and for each type of vehicle.
The invention seeks to provide an exhaust volume which enables the space available beneath a vehicle to be used rationally, which is light in weight, and which is of low manufacturing cost.